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Does SEO as an industry do enough in terms of helping others and introducing technology to women and minorities?

I had placed this question on a weekend and someone suggested I redo the title and repost it for the weekday crowd. I respect them, so here it is.

I think the spirit of TAGFEE came into being as the result of the type of people Rand and those who influenced him and Moz are as human beings. I have seen large numbers of SEO’s reach out to help the dad of an autistic child in his efforts to improve a site around autism. I have also seen others in the SEO community lend their time to innumerable causes. That time is expensive and they do not get it back, but they give it freely.

I read on PCWorld a piece by John Rebeiro (@JohnRebeiro) about Google's employee diversity. In it, Google in the US is 70% male and 61% white. There is more data and it's worth a read. My question for those of you who may employ more than a 2 to 3 people is are you actively engaged in doing anything to interest young women, minorities, lower income children, etc. in coding, SEO, computer science, etc.? There are programs around STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) that are gaining some steam. Google, offers stipends or awards to those who are promoting these types of efforts in the form of their RISE awards.

We held a Code Camp for high school students from 9th to 12th grade back in March. (drumBEATMarketing.net/code-camp) We had 16 students and our staff did the entire program for a week. It was truly enlightening and when you see a girl in the 10th grade who never even considered coding find herself absorbed by it, you will be moved. We gave a small $25 award for the student who put the most in, made the most progress, etc. She won and she pushed our dev staff to deliver more and more knowledge. 16 kids coded their own sites, put in graphics, etc. after four days of instruction. It was worth everything in time and money we put into it.

We also offer paid internships to high school students and college students in the summers. We take two from high schools and two from college. We give them real work and real education. This is not the bring me some coffee type of internship. They are forced into the reality of an advertising and marketing agency with a serious digital practice. In all of this, we receive so much more than we give.

I would like to be able to learn from others who are doing things like this and am totally open to sharing with others all of our materials, knowledge, etc. so long as you do not use it as a profit making enterprise. I would even be open to creating some type of collective or platform for sharing and growing these programs as "the SEO or inbound marketing community." I just believe we need more girls, minorities, people from lower economic areas, etc. in our world and I believe we can make a difference. So, what do you do or what do you suggest?

12 Responses

While I'll always applaud and cheer on classes and programs designed to help women and minorities learn technical skills, I believe the bigger hurdle and challenge is when it comes to actual jobs and how we're treated once that's our profession. I see many people fall out of love with technology due to how they're treated once they're in the workforce. Because sexism, racism, ableism, etc. is so ingrained systemically in our culture, it's alive and well in our workplaces, and yes, even in ones with good company cultures. Most people aren't directly discriminatory. Instead, it's tiny micro-aggressions that add up. It's things like only see white men promoted; jokes that are sexual in nature; being called "dear" or "sweetheart"; getting asked if you're the secretary and to refill someone's coffee; getting asked about plans to have children (illegal, but happens); no one knowing where the women's room is; not having a unisex/family bathroom; naming conference rooms geeky things and then expecting everyone to get the reference; not having daycare; scrappy startup building that's only accessible via stairs; comments that "you're just like a man" or "are the whitest [insert minority] person"; etc. I could go on. I know personally, I was barely 4 months into my digital marketing career when I had the first highly inappropriate, sexual pass made at me by someone in the C-suite (which was all populated by men).

Tackling this stuff is hard because it moves beyond equality and into social justice. I believe most people these days do believe in equality. But when you start doing social justice work, that's when people (mostly white people or men) start thinking that women and minorities are getting an unfair advantage. This is one of my favorite drawings that explains the difference between equality and justice. Unfortunately, when women and minorities speak out about it, we get shut down with death threats, rape threats, firings, ostracizing, etc., which is not what happens when men speak out about feminism, white people speak out about racism, etc. And when it affects your day-to-day safety and your economic potential, you need other people, who have privilege, to help make the change.

You said a mouthful and to address it all properly will take a bit of writing, so please bear with me. I am saying what follows not to pat myself on the back, but so that you will know "a change, it is a comin'."

It is very hard to correct all that is wrong systemically in a culture by focusing on just one part of that culture - the workplace. For me, the workplace is the best place for me to light a single candle*. I have 14 employees and the two "executive" positions below me are held by women of which one of them is hispanic. The other twelve employees are 9 women and probably two thirds hispanic and 3 men (one is of Indian heritage). But, how did we get there? Because having traveled extensively, having been in the USMC, having worked in healthcare with brilliant people of all genders, orientations, cultures, and having grown up in the Deep South where I saw separate water fountains growing up, I learned what was real and how people are so afraid of change. All I can do now, is what I can do and I am doing it as fast as possible. So, within our offices one cannot treat others inappropriately.

But, I will caution you with regard to one thing Erica: When I was just a boy growing up in Summerville, SC, I would walk to a little store to buy candy. There was a lady who worked there who was black and whenever I came in (or anyone else) she would say, "What you need, baby?" or "What you need, love?" I always felt so special when she would say that. And, remember, this was not 10 or 20 years ago, this was in the early 60's. I know to this day she would have taken me in if I had no family.

About 10 years ago, I had a business in Tampa and would fly in and out of the airport there regularly. On a trip home, I walked up to the Starbucks near the gate and a big black lady said, "What you need, love?" Erica, I almost cried. I went back 40 years in a minute.

Now, why do I tell you this? Because I hope you will consider that if you look too closely for a slight, you will likely find it. I grew up in the South and we spoke a certain way (you might call it colloquial). To this very day, in spite of working very hard not to use specific endearments, I still will occasionally say something to a woman or a child and all of a sudden I end it with, "love." It is in no way meant as a slight, nor is it me speaking down to someone; it is something that was ingrained in me from my childhood. I get that the world changed and I make every effort to not misspeak, but if I do, I am simply misspeaking.

Anyone who knows me today knows that the group I am most likely to speak down about is the "old white men" group; yes, I have a membership card to it. I in no way grew up in privilege (my father was an electrician who worked for the US Navy and then for "the man."), but I was born intelligent. I have endeavored to use that intelligence to understand others and to reach out where I could. I carry no white guilt and no male guilt; I just think we need to do what is right by others. If you look at where you have gotten yourself to, you have likely had a little help along the way; if so, you can rail against those who are pigs or you can seek to show others a way out. I have done that with code camps, internships (paid) etc. and I have taught my son and stepdaughter to do the same. Should you ever need someone to stand up for you when you face oppression or retaliation, please feel free to contact me. Anyone who knows me will tell you, I will do what I can to assist you. Believe me, I will.

Best,

Robert

*Should anyone think I could have said family, I have a bi-racial family and they have multi-racial children, etc. My son has been reared to understand that we were made large and smart and we are lucky; we have to stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves. The greatest compliment I ever got about him was the day a teacher said, "He stood up for her against his friends."

I know I will make time to read it as it talks about Minecraft. I remember my son at about 13 coming to me about developing some type of proxy server so he could expand his Minecraft operations. I find that in itself an interesting way to attract girls to coding.

I went to a large STEM conference yesterday and the keynote speaker was Cameron Evans of Microsoft. I was very impressed with his knowledge of education and of the learning process. A very interesting point he made was that in computer games (I think Halo, etc.) 80% of the time those who play lose. So, What makes them keep trying over and over? His answer was around the abilities to adapt, create, re-evaluate, etc.

Then he pointed to education (specifically middle school and high school) and stated: with education, failure is too final. Due to that finality the student gives up instead of wanting to retry.

Very compelling. I was amazed at some of the rather disjoint efforts being made in STEM. For me, approaching a school about a week long code camp where we supply our employees, the facilities and even to a degree the computers, I am first told how I have to get the approval of the approver of approvals to ask for an approval to approach someone who can direct me in the approval process. I am not kidding. You would think I wanted to use the kids for Solyent Green!

I was at a STEM discussion two days ago and I have to say there were a couple of women in the room. What I found interesting was that their panel had 4 men (2 white, 1 hispanic, and one African American though) and one woman, but she was a librarian. (Not knocking librarian, but no women in technology? I was very impressed by Cameron Evans, CTO, Microsoft. If you get a chance to hear him as a keynote or other, check him out. The other SEO's here are female and I came (a long time ago) from being an RN so, I guess it is a bit easier for me. When I became an RN 2% of that workforce were male.

Let's find a way to get the word out to middle schools and lower about how much fun we have!

Actually, librarians are some of the best people for a search organization to be working with. They realized long ago that the world published knowledge was going digital. Today their degrees are often "library information science". Their role at many educational institutions is more "information literacy" than checking books in and out. Information literacy includes how to find things on the web and in large nonpublic databases, how search engines work, curation of digital information, and more.

You used to go into a library and say... "I am trying to find information about XYZ." and they would help you find a book to answer your question. Today you can ask a librarian for the same type of help and they help you compose a search query to find a website instead of a book. They can probably teach the average guy who works in SEO a few things about composing search queries.

The great Link Moses (Eric Ward) is a librarian by training and he often talks about that (an example here). Librarians are all about organizing content verticals, citations, attributions, quality of references... all of those things that search engines consider in an algo. Rand admits here that he is into librarian types :-)

I used to visit third through fifth grade classrooms to demonstrate active learning science activities that I had presented to teachers at meetings of the National Science Teachers Association. These were one-period sessions of 40 minutes (plus or minus). I made-up a menu of several activities from which the teachers could select. Each of these were highly prepared and tested lessons with hands-on materials that got a strong response from students. I had done each of them dozens of times and evaluated and improved after each outing.

I used to do about fifty of these presentations per school year and had to limit them to the schools closest to my office. I also received requests to present different subjects and different grade levels but declined those because of the large amount of time needed to prepare and test new subjects or to adapt lessons to different grade levels. I figured out what worked well and stuck with it.

It was fun to move from teaching at the college level to 3rd to 5th grade. Kids at that age are so curious and have a genuine interest. Everything that I needed to do these lessons fit into a box of about 12x10x6 inches. After I had done the lesson a couple dozen times I could grab the box on the way out the door without spending time to prepare.

These were done while I lived in a rural area with a very low population density and income level. Almost no minorities, but schools in that area rarely had any outside visitors for an educational activity.

If you want to get into this type of activity in a big way, you can get grants from the National Science Foundation. They have teacher enhancement projects where you can help teachers improve their skills in an area of your expertise, informal science education projects for teaching outside of the classroom format, or demonstration projects where you visit local schools with science activities or bring students to your location. I ran some of these projects at a government science agency a couple careers ago.

I could imagine an SEO company getting funded in the $xxx,xxx range for information literacy projects that help teachers and students do better research with search engines. That money would not be something that you could use to make a profit. It would be project support that would go *on top of* the time of your staff to purchase materials and services needed to do a fantastic job on the project.

Thanks for a great example! As to the money, all one has to do is go read about Google RISE awards and you will see that if you need supplemental $$ it can be there. I am impressed that you do not have to be a non-profit or an NGO to apply for the funds. Their main criteria seems to be that you are going after the underserved, young girls and minorities, and you have a program that is regional in scope (a city is considered regional). When we do a code camp, we have never charged more than $50 per head for the week and we supply the lunches, drinks and snacks, and t-shirts for all. (Not really a profit making venture as the space alone is $225 per day.) We are going to apply for a rise award so we can take it to more public schools and not have to charge at all.

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